Chasse
by chaleur
Summary: Homecomings are sweet, and home is a relative idea. Isumi x Waya. Mild.


**_Chassé_**  
by Alexandra Lucas

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_**Chassé**: A step ball change traveling in any direction._  
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Waya toes his sneakers off carelessly in the doorway. Isumi follows behind, a bit more slowly, and puts his shoes in the corner before looking around. Waya's apartment is neat because there's not enough space for it to be messy, clothes hanging on the wall, a futon folded into the corner, and there's enough room for a study group of ten if they're friendly and not too particular about where they sit.

"Not much, but it's home." Waya waves Isumi to the go-ban, and nudges his copies of Weekly Go out of the way graciously. He hands a Pocari Sweat to Isumi, settles himself on the other side, and takes a long, deep drag from his own can. He smirks over the rim at Isumi and nudges a go-ke towards him. "It's got everything I need."

"So I see." Isumi takes the go-ke in both hands, lifts the lid. White stones. "Should we nigiri?"

"Nah." Waya sets the can aside and brushes his hands over the thighs of his jeans to dry them. The lazy, content look in his eyes is replaced by the fiercer glint that Isumi remembers so well. "Let's just play." He grinned. "I haven't been mucking around since you went off. Let's see how I match up now." He digs his hand into the stones, runs them through his fingers in a way that is half-unconscious, and he holds Isumi's gaze steadily.

"Then, _onegaishimasu_." They bow, and begin.

*

An hour into the game, Waya realizes, with no small amount of frustration, that he's in trouble. He leans back on his arms, looking at the board with bemusement and a little disgust. The situation doesn't look any better for him from this angle either, and he's already spent ten minutes trying to find a way to save the group in the upper right corner. None of the sequences he can think of work, and agitated now, he curls his hands into the stones in his go-ke, the stones clattering irritably in his palm.

Isumi is a calm statue on the other side of the board, and he reflects, annoyed, that if only Isumi had played like this during the examinations, their positions would be reversed. But Isumi didn't, and Waya, not Isumi, is the pro, and he rolls a stone between his fingers and muses about the fickleness of luck. 

He sees Isumi shift, out of the corner of his eye, as though he knows what Waya is thinking, and he looks up a little too quickly, guilt burning high in his cheeks, because Isumi's his friend, but Isumi only watches him, and does not smile. Waya looks back down at the go-ban. Nothing's changed, he still can't see a way out, and two moves later, the group is dead. The board is in Isumi's favour, but Waya's not so easily beaten. He decides to go for the centre, and expand into the middle right territory, edging Isumi's white into the corner.

*

Forty minutes later, Waya's black is struggling to hold the centre against Isumi's relentless assault, and the middle right is lost. Waya doesn't bother to try and keep the scowl off his face as he surveys the mess Isumi's made of his formations, and he resists the urge to kick something large and solid very hard.

"_Makemashita_." Restless with his irritation, he pushes away from the board and stalks over to the fridge for another can. He wants to pace the anger at himself off, but there's nowhere to go in his apartment, and he flops back down on the other side of the go-ban, stretching out on the floor so he doesn't have to look at either Isumi or the board until he feels like it again. The stones click quietly, a familiar sound that grates on his ears this time, and there's the rustle of stones into the go-ke. Rain always reminds Waya of that sound, a gentle shower of white and black stones falling into place at the end of a game, at the end of the day, and he realizes with a start that it is raining, and has been for some time. 

"I forgot my umbrella," Isumi's voice, coming from the other side of the go-ban, is quiet, almost meditative, and Waya sighs. He has never been able to stay angry with Isumi for long.

"You might as well stay over. It's late anyway," and it's true, he knows before he checks his watch," almost twelve. You'll never make the last train." He levers himself up in time to catch a look from Isumi that he can't quite decipher, clear-eyed and steady, the look Isumi gets when he's in the middle of a game, in the zone, unshakeable and completely absorbed. Only, this time, the game has already ended. He stares back for a moment, puzzled, but Isumi gets up and starts clearing their cans out of the way, so he shakes it off and goes to unfold the futon, feeling slightly out of step somehow, just out of beat with Isumi, and the game they just played. Like something small but important that has changed, and he's the only one who doesn't know what it is. Isumi might know, but he gets the feeling that if he asked, Isumi would just fix him with that inscrutable look again, and not answer. 

He hands Isumi one of the oversized shirts he keeps to bum around in his apartment, worn only once this week, he thinks - he hasn't found the time to bring the laundry home - and lets Isumi use the toilet first. They brush past each other on their way through the door, and Waya catches the passing minty smell of his toothpaste on Isumi, his soap on his hands, and he closes the door quickly.

When he comes out, Isumi is already stretched out on the futon, one of Waya's pillows folded in half under his neck as he flips through one of Waya's magazines. He's wearing only Waya's t-shirt and his boxers, his jeans folded neatly over his bag, and Waya can't remember if he had them on when he came out of the bathroom. His mind supplies him unexpectedly with a picture of Isumi twisting out of his jeans on Waya's futon, and he feels his palms go damp and he flushes. 

Waya curls onto his side of the futon and buries his face in the pillow, determined not to look at Isumi again, and quickly pulls the blanket up before he can embarrass himself. He feels the blanket slip as Isumi shifts, and grabs for the hem with a sense of desperation.

"Do you want me to turn the light off?"

He has to lift his head from the pillow to answer, but turns it away from Isumi. "Just turn it off when you're done reading." He screws his eyes tightly shut, and wills his erection away, trying not to listen to Isumi turning the page or the rain outside, or the too-fast thump of his heart. He concentrates very hard on the image of Morishita-sensei.

"You've improved, Waya." Isumi's voice is closer than he thought it would be, and he hears his throat click audibly as he swallows, but if Isumi notices, he doesn't mention it. "It was a good game, today."

"You still won." And maybe he's still a bit angry with Isumi, but not much. "China has been good for you." It is only the truth, and he recalls the look on Isumi's face as he played, focussed and very sure as he placed the stones. "I guess you really did need to get away from us for a while."

"It wasn't like that, Waya." Isumi is being gentle again, too understanding of Waya and too close, like they had been, or Waya thought they had been.

"You left, didn't you? You didn't even bother to tell us. Or me." His voice is harder than he had intended it to be, and Waya finds that he can be bitter, after all. The mint of the toothpaste is sour in his mouth.

"There were some things that I couldn't learn here. With you." Soft and contemplative, and there's a hand on his shoulder, pulling him onto his back where Isumi can hold his face and force Waya to look at him.

"Like what?" Waya asks, and he feels that something that has been throwing him off click into place.

"Many, many things," Isumi breathes, and covers Waya's mouth with his own. Isumi tastes like mint and toothpaste, and smells of Waya's soap and Waya's shirt, layered over the smell of his skin, and this is the smell that Waya's forever going to associate with home.

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**Terminology:**  
_go-ke_: The cup that holds the stones _go-ishi_: The black and white go stones _go-ban_: The board _Onegaishimasu_: Please (traditional to say this and bow before the beginning of a game) _Makemashita_: I resign 


End file.
